BASIL AND JOYCE HILLE'S TRIP TO OUTBACK WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Having just completed two months (July - August 2009) of caravanning with Joyce and friends, Alwyn and Joy Tarca in Western Australia, I would like to share with you some of the places we visited.

We traveled up the Stuart Highway as far as Erldunda, then we turned left and headed for Uluru or Ayers Rock as we know it. We stayed in the Resort Caravan Park for two nights and took photos and movies (DVDs) of sunrise and sun sets. We were very fortunate, the morning we took photos it rained, so we had rainbows over the rock, turned out very good. No we didn’t climb the rock, it was closed due to the wet and windy weather. On leaving Uluru, we journeyed over to the Olga’s, boy are they massive. It required lots of walking, being cold and windy, I didn’t go far (chicken). What I did notice was the Rock formation. While Uluru is composed of Granite the Olga’s are composed of round water washed, smooth stones about the size of small footballs on large tennis balls, and these are cemented into a conglomerate of mass. I found the geology very interesting.

Anyway, after leaving the Olga’s, we headed into rough dirt roads and into the unknown. Traveling west towards the Peterman Rangers, made famous by *Lassiter and his Lost Golden Reef. We were hoping to find the site of the Cave he sheltered in, in his last dying days, but missed the turn off.

By now we are deep in Aboriginal Land and requiring a permit. To travel on this road and across "Their Land", you are given specific places to camp. While traveling these lands and one such is at Docker River, might I say, very pretty country, but Docker River settlement is a dump, can’t take photos, if caught you can be prosecuted.

Camels roam the streets, some three or four kilometers out of town was the designated campsite, it was well set out, quite pretty among the desert Oaks, running water and toilet, but nothing worked, it was a disgrace, you wouldn’t want to go and use the toilets, you would be sick, they were filthy!

We are now into Western Australia and on the Great Central Highway, and on arriving at Giles Weather Station; we find we have lost all our water from the caravan tank. Looking underneath we find the plastic pipe fittings were broken by stones, thrown up by our vehicle. The friends we are traveling with shared their water with us. Giles was an interesting place; saw Len Beadell's famous Grader in its protective cage. The next town we came to was Wanakurna, here we made temporary repairs to our caravan water tanks before heading west again. This road surface was good, not many corrugations but millions of small iron stones the size of marbles and they really made a mess of the front of the caravan, I had forgotten to fit the double set of mud flaps to our towing vehicle, it would have prevented all this damage but they were sitting at home.

On through Warburton another "Aboriginal Settlement" we went by, while traveling along this road we investigated various rock water holes, caves, saw camels and lots of wild flowers as we neared Laverton, a gold mining town, we didn’t stop there, instead we headed for Leonora. We stayed there about three days looking around, visited the Sons of Gwalia Gold Mine at Gwalia, a deserted town with lots of history, I could write more on this area.

Leaving Leonora we headed north to Leinster, then west through Sandstone to Mt Magnet where we stayed several days. Incidentally all these places are rich in Gold Mining and history. Much can be said about these places. While we were in Mt Magnet, we watched contestants in "The Australasian Safari". They started at Geraldton and finished at Kalgoorlie, about 5 days later. It included motor bikes, cars and quad bikes. One reason we stayed was because my cousin was a contestant in the motor bike section, he has also been a contestant in the African and Argentine Dakar Safari’s.

On leaving Mt Magnet which is situated on the Great Northern Highway, we again headed North through Meekatharra on to Newman. There again we spent several days on tours to the worlds largest open cut mine, the town and museums etc.

We restocked the van with provisions, and we headed for the Karijini National Park, we are now in Iron Ore Country, and everything gets red dust in to it and lots of it.

Karijini National Park has numerous spectacular Gorges that require certain types of fitness; it requires lots of walking, climbing down steps cut into rock, and climbing back up again. Down in the bottom of the Gorges, one can be treated to wonderful vistas of palm trees, ferns, trees of different types. From on top of the Gorge, running water, lovely water pools on ponds and magnificent rock formations in the cliff face. We spent a few days exploring these different Gorges; some were too difficult for us to access however.

We then headed across to Tom Price, another Iron Ore mining town, where again we stayed a number of days in the Caravan Park. We didn’t take a mine tour here, but looked at many other things of interest including driving to the top of Mt Nameless, one of the highest mountains in Western Australia, where we were treated to a most spectacular view of the mine. The town and the country side with its red hills and plains that stretched as far as the eye could see, Tom Price is the highest town in Western Australia.

Newman, Tom Price and Paraburdoo are the three largest iron ore mining towns in the Pilbara region, which covers an area larger than Victoria.

In June 2001, BHP Billiton Iron Ore set a record for the worlds longest and heaviest train, comprising eight Locomotives and 682 ore cars, it measured 7.353 kilometers and had a mass of 99,732.1 tones, it carried a world record Load of 82,262 tones of iron ore over a distance of 275 kilometers from the mines to Port Headland.

The train was assembled to test a new control system, allowing a single driver in the front Locomotive to simultaneously control the other seven engines.

The 426 kilometer Port Hedland to Newman is one of Australia’s longest privately owned railways, a typical train on the Newman Railway has six locomotives up to 6,000 horse power each pulling more than 24,000 tones of iron ore in 300 cars, the trains are up to 3.75 kilometers long and the journey takes approximately eight hours, the trains run 24 hours a day, everyday, of the year making it the most productive heavy haul railway in the world.

The two largest iron ore producers in the Pilbara are BHP Billaton and Hamersley iron, while BHP Billaton operations are centered mainly at Newman and Port Hedland, Hamersley Iron are at Tom Price and Karratha.

After leaving Tom Price, we again headed North, then East skirting the northern side of Karijini National Park, around to a place I am sure all will know "Wittenhoom", famous for its asbestos. On approaching the old town site we note on the GPS many streets now deserted with only a few houses and about 40 residents still remaining, it must have been a fairly large town in its hey day, the town is not where the asbestos problem is, its up the Wittenhoom Gorge, authorities discourage people from going into the Gorge because of Asbestos dust, however many people still venture into this gorge. Throwing caution to the wind, we ventured into this gorge, the road accessing the gorge and old mines sites, once a bitumen road is crumbling into disrepair, but still trafficable with care, what we find in this gorge is one of the prettiest gorges we came across in the whole trip, the scenery, the water holes and streams along with the trees and the hills with their red cliffs are stunning, up about ten kilometers is the remains of another old settlement dating back to earlier times, now just cement slabs of some ones homes along with the white trunked trees and various flowering shrubs etc, but on inspecting the ground in places it is full of fine asbestos particles, the locals from around the district come and picnic and swim in the many water holes in summer and say no worries, as long as you don’t stir up the dust, we also noted quite a few campers on our return journey, if the area could be cleaned up it would make a wonderful tourist attraction.

From there we journeyed to Port Hedland and a caravan park where we stayed only a short time before again hitting the road. Our goal "Marble Bar" made famous for being the hottest town in Australia, in fact Oodnadatta has the highest temperature. On the 2^nd of January 1960, 50.7 degrees was recorded. Marble Bar is famous for its 160 consecutive days over 38.7 degrees in the summer of 1923-24, making it the hottest for the longest period. Had a drink of beer in the old Iron Clad Hotel, in the early day’s beer was stacked on wire frames and covered with wet Hessian to keep it cool. Today Marble Bar is a very pleasant neat and tidy town, and one of its most impressive buildings is the old Government building with its impressive architecture and stone work.

But we came to look at the famous Marble Bar, so we traveled up the Coonan River, just west of the town to see this famous Marble Bar, which is actually jasper, it’s a form of Quartz, but very pretty when wet with water, high lighting its various colours, reds through to blue and white, the clean pool below the bar is a popular swimming spot.

On leaving Marble Bar, we headed back to the Great Northern Highway and headed east to a place called the Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park, where we were to meet up with Alwyn and Joy’s daughter and family who traveled down from Broome. We spent about five lovely days there in a setting of Palm Trees and wonderful people, all retirees, or grey nomads, some came from as far away as Victoria and Glenelg S.A. To spend the winter months fishing, and they caught plenty, well over a meter long, or just whiling away the time, they book twelve months ahead, we were made most welcome. I was a little sad when the time came for us to leave, and as all things come to an end, we headed west back to Port Hedland.

Port Hedland is an old town, going back to pearling and pastoral days of the late 1880’s, being a sleepy little town until it became the busy thriving port it is today, due to the mining and shipment of Iron Ore, which changed its lifestyle forever, making it Australia’s largest Iron Ore port and one of the busiest commodity ports in the world. Exporting more than 100 million tones of iron ore as well as 3.5 million tones of salt a year, a ship 320 meters long can be loaded with 220,000 tones of ore in 35 hours.

Heading west on the North West Coastal Highway, we passed by a pretty little place called "Whim Creek", with an impressive Hotel dating back to the late 1890’s, with a beautiful swimming pool and lots of "Dongas" – ATCO type buildings, with lawns, Palm Trees, flowering shrubs, concrete paths, all neat and tidy, but the place is all but deserted and will probably fall into disrepair due to the closure of the local Copper Mine.

Our next stop was Roebourne, where we booked into the local Caravan Park for the next few days. Its information Centre is the old Roebourne Goal, a fine old stone building with lots of history, also being a museum; it had many old photos including how they chained up the local Aborigines and the ones they hung when they disobeyed our Law. It was one of the first places we visited on arrival.

Roebourne again is a very old town, dating back to the 1880’s, as is Cossack with its very impressive stone court house and customs house, which was north west of Western Australia’s first Port, but today totally deserted, but in excellent condition having been restored by locals, Hamersley Iron and another interesting group.

Roebourne however retains its early character and charm, and lives on with a population of several hundred, including its Indigenous population.

It was from here we left our caravans and traveled several hundred kilometers south to the Millstream Chichester National Park. On the way down we passed magnificent scenery, stopping at a water hole called python Pool. We drove up to the top of Chichester Range for a spectacular view of the surrounding hills and plains in their reds and the yellows of the spinifex grass, which went as far as the eye could see, on top of this Range was one of the main Afghan Cameleers trails which they constructed to cross this mountain range, it was pleasing to see it being maintained as a walking trail.

Coming into Millstream National Park, again we had to part with another $5.00 to enter. All National Parks we entered required a fee. Millstream is truly an Oasis in a very hospitable region. It is situated on the Fortescue River, and this section is fed by under ground springs of quite high volume, 12 months of the year. It is from this stream that Karratha and surrounding towns draw most of their water supply along with Harding Dam, some 100kilometers to the north.

Millstream is a series of pools being some kilometers long by 100-200 meters wide, and depths to 50-100meters. Along its banks are paper bark, Coolibar and Livistona and Palm Trees. When viewed from on top of the red iron stone cliffs, one has a sight to behold.

Going to the old Millstream homestead, it was a station once prior to becoming a National Park. We find a beautiful old stone building with verandahs all around, and if one wanders down several path ways to the river, you come to a very delightful place, with its two types of Palm Trees, e.g. Livistona and the Phoenix Date Palm. The Latter being planted by the old Afghan cameleers many years ago, and now being removed causing the area to be over grown, along with its crystal clear ponds, with water Lilies, fish swimming and quite rapid flowing water, it is a sight to behold and a wonderful place on a hot summer day.

On the return journey, we go by a different route, one that will follow the Railway Line from Tom Price to Karratha, again terrific scenery and we have a good chance to view the many Iron Ore trains on this line, going to and fro. On our return that night, we decided to dine out and go to a place called Port Sampson and have a Lovely meal of fish called "red Emperor" and chips, yum yum.

On leaving Roebourne with our caravans, we headed for Karratha. It is the largest town in the North West, with a shopping centre not much smaller than Tea Tree Plaza; it was a good place to top up with some supplies. We then headed for Dampier which again is a very large Iron Ore loading port, but now becoming very important as the main offshore gas treating and storing terminal, there is much activity going on here, business desperate for workers. You wouldn’t have any trouble getting work here, signs everywhere wanting workers. I forgot to mention earlier that women driving dump trucks in the Iron Ore Mines are on $150,000.00 a year, plus women office workers in the mines are $140,000.00

As a result, people in business can’t pay these sorts of wages and are finding it difficult to obtain staff.

More could be said on this location, but time and space prevents, however I will mention a true story about a Red Dog. Red Dog as he is known, has a statue in Dampier and it goes like this; He was born at Tom Price, his owner shifted him to Dampier but no longer wanted him, anyway, this dog wandered all over the country side, hitching rides on buses, on private cars or walking. He traveled to Broome, to Perth, twice, rode Iron Ore Trains to Tom Price and returned. Much more could be said, however some one didn’t like this celebrity and poisoned him one day, he was buried in a grave between Roebourne and Cossack, this happened back in the 1970’s. There is a book of his exploits available in different locations in the area.

On leaving Dampier, we again headed West down and across to Exmouth, via the North West Coastal Highway.

Exmouth was and is famous for the Harold Holt Naval Communication Station and the Ningaloo Reef, which is Coral Marine Reef, similar to the Great Barrier Reef, only that it is quite close to the shore, you can see all its wonders by stepping of the beach with pair flippers and snorkeling apparatus. It is a very long Reef, several hundred kilometers long. Cape Range national Park which runs along this Peninsular has become very spectacular gorges, not unlike the Grand Canyon in America, only not as big.

On standing by the Vlaming Head Lighthouse on the tip of Cape Range and looking out to Sea with a pair of binoculars, we can observe numerous gas drilling platforms far out at sea. Another thing Exmouth is famous for, is its fishing and climate, many people from the South of the State come to spend winter here.

On leaving Exmouth we pass the FAAF base of Learmonth, situated about 30kilometers south. It is in this vicinity we inspect the monument recording; the date and the departure from this site of the men who carried out the raid on Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbor during WWII in the little boat "The Krait", a truly daring raid.

Further South we call into Coral Bay, a pretty little place, but find it crowded and hard to find a place to park the caravans and vehicles, so we head on to Carnarvon, where we stayed for a few days sight seeing.

Carnarvon is noted for its semi tropical climate and for its growing fruit and vegetables, notably Bananas, capsicums, Tomatoes and much more, this is made possible due to the Gascoyne River, a river that is full of sand, but underneath its broad reaches lies large amounts of water, protected from the hot sun and evaporation.

It was here Joyce had a tooth extracted by a dentist, thus relieving the pain she had endured for the last week or so.

We found Carnarvon an enjoyable place to stay, the Caravan Park is quite nice and handy to all services, while here we drove up the Coast about sixty kilometers to a place called the Blow Holes. There we watched this blow hole in action as the waves came in, it shot water high into the air; also saw Whales from this distance. We then proceeded further up the Coast on another rough road to a very historic site; this was the place where the German survivors from the German Raider, the "Kormoran" after doing battle with "HMAS Sydney" came ashore. This cairne has been erected on Quobba Station and shows different locations as to where and what events took place all those years ago.

As we all know, the loss of HMAS Sydney off of the shores of Carnarvon was and still is the Greatest Australian Maritime Loss of Lives, its location was mystery along with that of the Kormoran until their recent discovery.

HMAS Sydney II memorial drive was constructed at the South entrance to Carnarvon in 2001, an avenue of 645 plaques and Palm Trees identifies the individual loss of life in this tragic battle.

From Carnarvon we journeyed down and across to Shark Bay, to a place called Denham, on leaving our caravans in the local Caravan Park, we journeyed early next morning over Monkey Mia, famous for its Dolphins and its feeding ritual, what a wonderful site seeing these mammals in their environment, and coming so close to us humans. Yes I did have the pleasure of all the people around, being selected to feed a Dolphin.

Shark Bay and its adjacent waters are wonderful sights to behold. To the West of Denham is a place called Steep Point, it is the most Western part of the Australian mainland.

Down the highway and across to a place called Kalbarri, another place of fabulous scenery situated adjacent to the Murchison River and the Kalbarri National Park and Gorges.

From there we headed down the Coast to Geraldton, it’s a big town but decided to keep going, didn’t interest us, so followed again down the Coast to a town called Cervantes and our main objective "The Pinnacles" situated in Numbug National Park, here we didn’t mind spending our five dollars, they have top class facilities, toilets, info centre and excellent parking and pathways, and the Pinnacles are stunning, you can drive around this large area in your car and look in awe at this wonderful phenomena.

Down the Brad Highway to Gin Gin, a small town but our interest lay in a place 20 kilometers to the West "The Leaning Tower of Gin Gin", located at "Gravity Discovery Centre", it is here they have duplicated in height and lean of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. This tower here is constructed of 180 tones of Galvanized steel, has 222 steps, is 45 meters high, and has 15 degrees inclination. On climbing to the top, you wonder if the thing might fall over, it was a very windy day when we made the climb and it didn’t fall over.

It is an interesting place where people interested in the universe can come and learn these subjects, one interesting piece of equipment is a large structure where you can calculate the weight or mass of our planet Earth, the complex housing this equipment is very new and is still being constructed, a giant telescope covering an extremely large area is planned for construction in the very near future, costing millions of dollars, funding coming from Government and Private Corporations.

Leaving Gin Gin, we head for Perth, and the suburb "Mid Land" and the shopping centre, it was here we had a most delicious Chinese meal, and then headed east, this time we are now heading home. Our route takes us along the Great Eastern Highway, one such town we come to that catches our interest is Cunderdin and it Museum. On entering this fine old brick building was one of many pumping stations that housed pumps for the Perth to Kalgoorlie pipe line, the steam pump is the only surviving one left of the many originally used, the rest sold for scrap to Japan.

This pipe line was a master piece of engineering with its wooden pipes and all that went with it to get water to Kalgoorlie in the early 1900’s, across the road is one of Ken Maynards Ettamogah Pubs.

Next stop is Southern Cross, have a coffee break then off to Coolgardie, with its old architecture and wide streets, we decide to keep going and visit the town later on the way back to S.A, but as things some times turn out, we went via the shorter route through Kambalda.

On arriving at Kalgoorlie we made for the Caravan Park, we had selected to stay for a few days, however on entering the Park and going over one of their speed humps, there was a loud bang from the Caravan. On a closer inspection we find we have a broken spring and being a Friday afternoon, have no chance of getting it fixed over the weekend. We consider that it may take some time to repair.

As it turned out, it was Wednesday the following week before we got going again, as one had to come from Perth, however all was not lost, we spent those days sight seeing and seeing things we might not have done otherwise, several notable things we did was going down underground in an old mine on a tour, another was a tour of Kalgoorlie "Super Pit", this was truly a memorable experience.

I shall give you some information about the Super Pit; the origin of the Super Pit, it will eventually stretch 3.2 kilometers long and 1.4 kilometers wide and go down to a depth of more than 600mtrs. What was once the Golden Mile is now known as the Super Pit. W.A business man Alan Bond was one of the Brains behind the Super Pit, with Bond International Gold holding assets in Gold Mines of Kalgoorlie and North Kalgurli, buying up the individual leases, (there were something like 70 individual mines with their head frames and winders). Buying these leases meant a large scale cost effective operation could be formed. Poor old Bondy had liquidity problems with Bond Corporation Holdings and as a result Bond International Gold’s 50% share in the Super Pit was sold to Normandy Australia. Newmont Australia LTD and Barrick Gold of Australia LTD are the owners now and are being managed by Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines.

Huge Komatsu PC 8000 face shovels load Caterpillar 793 mining trucks with 225 tones with either waste rock or Ore, it takes around 45 minutes for a truck to be loaded haul out of the Pit, dump its load and return to the shovel, driving up the Ramp fully loaded is 12.5 km/hr.

Only about one truck is six carries Ore, the rest carry waste of low grade material, for every one million tone extracted from the Super Pit, there is between 250 and 300 kg of Gold with over 89 million tones of Ore and waste rock removed every year.

The Kalgoorlie Gold Fields is the largest gold producing region in Australia, and only the fourth in the World to have produced more than 50million ounces of Gold.

Blasting occurs on average, three to four times a week (we were fortunate to view this spectacle), providing hundreds of thousands of tones of rock to move.

A drive down Hay Street was a must; a visit to Boulder Sister City to Kalgoorlie was very interesting with its nineteenth century architecture and old buildings.

Eventually our new spring arrived from Perth which we promptly fitted enabling us to continue our journey the next morning.

It was to Kambalda West we headed for, Kambalda is noted for its Nickel Mines, the town beautifully set out among the native trees. The shopping Centre and almost new multi million dollar sporting Complex, but we find dying, they have no sporting teams left. People leave never to return. Apparently the mines no longer have any interest in the town any more although it was created by them, today however they consider it more beneficial to fly workers in from Perth or bus them down from Kalgoorlie, unlike the Super Pit Mine at Kalgoorlie where their policy is to hire only residents of Kalgoorlie. Kambalda will surely go the way of the "Doe Doe"

It was with some sadness we departed Kambalda and headed for our next stop, Norseman, to stock up on food and fuel. Norseman again we find is an old town but nice, so off we head into the morning sun and the challenging Nullarbor. At Bulladonia we travel the longest straight stretch in Australia. 146 kilometers to Caiguna, through places like Cocklebiddy to Madura, where we come down a very flat salt bush plain, then across and up to Eucla, where we pause for awhile, "Coffee Break", then across the boarder into good old S.A and the head of the bight, here we go Whale Watching and there are about fifteen we count, including Calves, what a sight! On the road again to Ceduna and had a Quarantine Inspection; no Fruit, Vegetables or Plants into S.A. We give what we have left and go into Ceduna to replenish our depleted larder. The trip across to Nullarbor certainly is a long section with few settlements, fuel is dear as one would expect. The scenery is not what I expected; it is mostly timbered or lightly timbered and only a small section with no trees. The main portion of the Nullarbor Plain lies to the North. The cliffs along the bight are certainly worth a detour to gaze upon. You certainly would not want to breakdown on this section; we were pleased our spring broke back at Kalgoorlie.

On crossing the Nullarbor, we had a very strong tail wind and pitied others going the opposite direction.

From Ceduna we traveled through lovely fields of Green Wheat Fields. The ones around Kimba are particularly good, past Iron Knob to Port Augusta, then South through Pt Wakefield, stopping at Dublin, here we decided on one last meal out before arriving home, so we went to the Pub; the special of the day was Roast Beef with choice of two soups for $9.50. I can truly recommend the Dublin Pub for a good meal, it was great. Then we headed for home, arriving mid afternoon and our 8 week wonderful Caravan Trip was over.

In summary I would have to say it was the trip of a lifetime, this is why we decided to share our adventures for any one who care to read about our travels. I have to say many thanks to Joy and Alwyn Tarca, for without them this adventure may not have been possible, they are wonderful traveling companions, this being our third such trip, the other two being "The Kimberly’s" and "Cape York Thursday Island", we met lovely people on our travels and they knew people we know, we took over 1,000 photos and hours of movie DVD footage, we did around 13,000 kilometers, spent 34 nights in Caravan Parks and 20 nights free Camping on road side stops.

Basil Hille